Wasn’t it Philomena Cunk who first observed that Shakespeare’s greatest work is Game of Thrones? She had a point. When I told friends that the Royal Shakespeare Company was adapting George R.R. Martin’s saga for the stage, the GoT fans lit up. The non-fans were incredulous, and not in a good way. Now Game of Thrones: The Mad King has landed, nearly four hours of it, and it represents a gamble for the RSC. Nearly a decade after peak Thrones, a vast inbuilt audience can no longer be assumed. This new stage version needs to please both camps if it’s to become the money-spinner that the company clearly (and justifiably) intends it to be.
I’d like to imagine that I’m the target audience. I enjoyed the TV series (cheered for Tywin; never trusted Daenerys; fast-forwarded past Arya) but drew the line at reading the novels. My companion, representing the opposite faction – a Lannister to my Stark, if you like – had never encountered Martin’s work in any form, and detests the entire fantasy genre. So I’m here to tell you that as sheer, eye-popping theatrical spectacle, The Mad King triumphs. More than that; it overwhelms. I doubt that the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, in recent memory, has ever seen such an onslaught of visual wonder, or such epic unbridled stagecraft. And I saw the Russell Beale Tempest.
The theatre itself has been transformed. The director, Dominic Cooke, has divided the auditorium into four, so it all happens in the round. To baleful horn calls (the music is the usual RSC assemblage of thuds and rumbles) huge gates swing open and a shadowy host processes through mist and light, banners swaying. Hang on, is that a horse? Actually, there are several horses (War Horse puppetry scales new heights of subtlety and daring here). We see armies ride into battle, and a full-scale tournament on horseback. It’s thrillingly kinetic. There are circling ravens, a quivering Heart Tree, and towering puppet knights (the audience purred when one was announced as the Mountain).
As sheer, eye-popping theatrical spectacle, The Mad King triumphs. More than that; it overwhelms
Duncan Macmillan’s drama (written in consultation with Martin) is set 17 years before the start of the first TV series, so spoilers are inevitable. Scrub that; they’re practically the whole plot. Macmillan retells the tragic love story of Lyanna Stark (a tomboyish Harmony Rose-Bremner) and the crown prince Rhaegar Targaryen (Noah Ritter, who looks and sounds as if he was born with dragon’s blood). Then comes the rebellion that deposes the psychopathic King Aerys (Michael Shaeffer pitches the title character somewhere between King Lear and Logan Roy), and ends with the ascent of Robert Baratheon (Callum Woodhouse – think Andy Burnham with a warhammer) to the Iron Throne, which is impressively spiky.
Naturally, it sprawls – it wouldn’t be Game of Thrones if you could actually follow everything that’s going on. Unseen characters appear for the first time, familiar ones pop up as their younger selves (sometimes unnecessarily – no one cares about Dorne) and the dialogue is authentically terrible. A few ‘mayhaps’ and ‘sweetlings’ go a long way; fewer might have gone further. And when did Ned Stark become such a wet blanket?
Meanwhile fan service is applied with a power hose, possibly to compensate for the lack of gore and nudity. In fairness there probably aren’t enough intimacy co-ordinators in the kingdom to do justice to the TV series in all its gratuitous, pre-woke glory; still, it’s a rum business when there’s more sex in Kenneth Branagh’s The Cherry Orchard (currently running next door in the Swan Theatre) than Game of Thrones. There’s also a jarring, preachy lurch in tone towards the end of Act Two, which feels alien to Westeros. Landing shortly before the entrance of Cersei Lannister (Daisy Franks), a trite feminist moral – ‘Heed the wisdom of mothers’ – is probably best taken as a grim joke.
But come on: this is a huge juicy feast of a show. Cooke and Macmillan deliver set piece after showstopping set piece, even if they don’t quite know how to tie up all the dangling storylines (again, it would hardly be Game of Thrones if they did). They even find a way to finesse Martin’s timeline and introduce a full-size dragon – a moment so unexpected, and so stunning, that I wanted to applaud there and then. Devotees will lap up The Mad King; newcomers will certainly not be bored. The West End beckons, and my fantasy-hating companion is making noises about streaming the TV series, though her official verdict was double-edged: ‘Why can’t the RSC do Shakespeare like this?’ Good question. Why?
Game of Thrones: The Mad King is at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until 5 September.
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